This new play written and
directed by
Yael Farber offers an alternative reading of a familiar
quasi-biblical story that colours it with both mundane politics and
otherworldly mysticism. It is evocative, provocative and not
especially clear.

It is fashionable in some
theological circles to
read Jesus's ministry as being as political as religious, part of a
cluster of open or covert threats to Roman rule in Judea. Farber
applies the same thinking to the stories of Salome and John the
Baptist.

Starting from the discovery
that almost everything we think
we know about Salome, even her name, is a much later elaboration on
the basic fact that a woman was somehow involved in John's death,
Farber realises that who the woman actually was is less interesting
than the fact that everyone around her had to define her in ways that
met their needs.

For convenience Farber
accepts the premise that she
was Herod's stepdaughter and the object of his desire, but draws the
line at her name. The play is narrated and commented on by the
long-dead spirit who insists on calling herself The Nameless
One.

She
shows us that the Romans, represented here by Pilate, saw any Jew who
gathered a following as a revolutionary and threat to Roman rule. To
prevent John's death from making him a mob-inspiring martyr, they had
to deflect attention to an evil but distracting femme fatale.

As a
Jew who had sold out to serve Rome against his own people, Herod
wanted some sensual rewards. John himself was quite aware that his
ministry had a political side in uniting the Jews through
reinvigorated faith, and in the play he sees this beautiful woman's
power as a metaphor for Jerusalem, something like France's
Marianne.

And what of the girl
herself, represented onstage by a second,
largely silent actress? Here Farber is somewhat reticent, preferring
to keep some things about her unknowable.

And therein lies the hole
that keeps the play from complete success, because Farber's mysteries
tip over into mystification, obscurity and lack of communication for
their own sake.

The playwright plays with
us, promising
clarifications she does not deliver and sometimes hiding behind
quasi-biblical and self-consciously poetic dialogue, while John (but
no one else) speaks only Hebrew throughout, requiring
surtitles.

And
as her own director, Farber fills the stage with clarity-clouding
effects, from literal mists and smoke, through the almost
uninterrupted musical keening of women, to striking visual imagery
and actual biblical quotations that can be more distracting than
communicative.

Olwen Fouere is an actress
with the power and
presence to invest The Nameless One with both authority and a
mystical aura, while Isabella Nefar gives the younger woman sensual
beauty and ultimate unknowability.

Ramzi Choukair can't do
much with
John as the language barrier and our constant need to look away from
him to read the titles prove too great a handicap, while Lloyd
Hutchinson's somewhat simpler Pilate – gruff military man who sees
things in black and white and is annoyed when the real world isn't
that clear – is the easiest to grasp and know.

In answering some
questions but not others, and in giving in a little too often to the
temptation to be deliberately puzzling, Yael Farber creates a play
and production that offer the audience a battle between fascination
and frustration, with the latter either winning or coming a close
enough second to limit the ultimate success.